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“Fair enough,” I said.
We finished up the bleach sprays and made our way back up the stairs. When we arrived, a few more pack members were hanging around. I could only assume they’d either smelled the blood or heard the commotion. Whatever the reason, they swarmed us for our freshly made disinfectant and got to work spraying down the floor, the walls—any surface that looked like it needed to be cleaned.
It was a long night, but a gratifying one. It felt good to help people get through the hardest part of this process, and it felt good to be doing it successfully. Sylvia had enough in her med kit to calm the nausea of the man who’d looked like he was literally puking his guts out. Strategic placement of the mesh controlled the amount of blood that was making a mess of things and helped shifters feel a little more held together.
In most cases, all we could do was manage pain and help people get through the night. Cole and I didn’t get much more sleep, but once the moaning and aching ended, we did get a bit of quiet time together.
We sat on the floor, legs extended in front of us. I leaned my head against his shoulder while he leaned his against the wall behind him. I looked up at him, watching him gaze at the room of shifters sleeping fitfully.
“Doing okay?” I asked him.
“Dreading your next shot, to be honest,” he said. “If it's anything like tonight, I’m not entirely sure I’ll make it through the night without imploding.”
“Mmm,” I said. “I have a good feeling about it, I guess. I’m not feeling too frightened about it, surprisingly.”
“Not as surprising to me as it is to you,” he said sleepily. “I just…I’d feel helpless if all I could do was watch you in pain like this.”
“I can’t imagine what that would be like,” I said with a bit of a warm, teasing tone. “Feeling helpless while you’re in need.”
He looked down at me sidelong before lifting his arm and pulling me in closer to him. “I know,” he said. “I know I’m being unfair and that you’ve gone through it a million times with me already. I know you’ve already been feeling this way.”
“It’s not a competition,” I pointed out. “I’m not trying to punish you for what I’ve been through or make you go through it out of spite or something.”
“I know,” he said. “I know you just want us all to be safe. That you want to feel safe. That you want to be able to protect us all. I certainly won’t try to take all that away from you, but I can’t deny that I’m worried about it.”
I nodded. “I know,” I echoed. “Hopefully, we can get a lucky break, though.”
“It would certainly be a first for us, wouldn’t it?” he joked. “A lucky break.”
I huffed a little laugh and nodded. “Yeah,” I said. “We’re long overdue for one, though.”
“I couldn’t agree more.”
“Why don’t you go up to bed and get some rest?” I suggested. “It seems like it’s quiet now. I can hold down the fort.”
“I want to spend this time with you,” he said. “I’ve been missing it lately.”
I nodded, and we both quieted again, holding vigil over the sleepy room, eventually falling asleep against each other just as the sun came up.
* * *
My second injection took place a few days after the hard night with the other shifters, once Cole and I were certain they were out of the woods and we could focus fully on any of the complications that could arise with me.
I was fully braced for it to be as terrible as it was for the others, but it simply…wasn’t. It was worse than the first, sure, but I didn’t have the same bad luck as the shifters trying to repair their ability to shift.
There was only one night that was truly bad, but it wasn’t because of complications from the injection. Weirdly enough, the discomfort came from the new abilities that began developing in my body as a result of the gene therapy. Namely, the new sense of smell I’d gotten and the enhanced strength I’d suddenly developed.
I rolled out of bed, covered in sweat and feeling grimy from a night of fever dreams and body aches. I was lucky in that I’d not dealt with any skin splitting, but that didn’t change the fact that I couldn’t gain the new strength without the shift in the construction of my muscles. But I could…smell myself. More than I’d ever been able to before.
There was a sort of pungency to me. The only thing I could compare it to was what I imagined alcoholics smelled like when they sweated out the booze they’d been drinking.
I needed a shower.
I stumbled out of bed, every muscle hurting as I walked over to the bathroom, throwing the faucet on the hottest setting I could bear. But even in that room—a room that had once smelled like shampoo or toothpaste—it now smelled like the interior of a candle store or one of those bath and body shops. The smells were entirely overwhelming, so much so that my eyes felt like they were hurting.
“Oh, god,” I groaned.
I heard Cole inhale sharply. Thinking for a moment that he’d followed me into the bathroom, I turned around, but he wasn’t there.
